How Sawyer Remodel Fort Lauderdale Was Born in Fort Lauderdale
We didn’t build Sawyer Remodel Fort Lauderdale from a napkin sketch or a garage in Hollywood. We brought it here because this city needed something different, and we were tired of watching people get burned.
The moment that sticks with us came in Rio Vista, maybe six years before we opened the doors here. A homeowner had signed a kitchen remodel contract with another outfit. The price was a guess, the timeline was a shrug, and the first change order arrived before the first cabinet did. She had already paid nearly half the job up front and had nothing to show for it but a gutted kitchen and a contractor who stopped answering texts. We walked through that house with her. She was embarrassed. Not angry yet, just embarrassed, like she had failed at something by trusting the wrong person.
That’s what stuck. Not the messy project. The embarrassment. Nobody should feel that way about their own home.
So when the opportunity came to bring the Sawyer Remodel name down to Fort Lauderdale, we said yes for her, and for every version of her we knew we’d find in Sailboat Bend, Victoria Park, and all the neighborhoods in between. The promise wasn’t complicated: a written price before any work starts, real photo updates along the way, and a live arrival time so nobody stares out the window wondering if anyone is coming. That’s the Relay standard. It’s what the brand stood for before we got here, and it’s what we hold to now.
Luca Romano’s Personal Connection to the Construction Trade
I’m Luca Romano, and I’ve spent more than a decade on job sites across South Florida. Long enough to know what a humidity-soaked stud feels like in a 1960s Fort Lauderdale bungalow. Long enough to know the sound a failing miter saw makes two cuts before it binds.
I didn’t grow up dreaming about this work. I grew up around it. The tradesman who trained me, back when I was barely old enough to carry his tool bag, was a remorseless perfectionist. Not mean, just exact. He would lay a level on a finished shelf ten times before he called it done, and he’d pull a tape on a reveal line from three angles before he even reached for the nail gun. I remember the smell of his truck: sawdust, dried paint, and the faint sweetness of citrus degreaser from the last job. I remember that he never once said “good enough.” The phrase didn’t exist in his vocabulary.
I fell into this work because I liked the honesty of it. You cut a board too short and the board doesn’t lie. You hang a door out of plumb and the door tells you. There’s no spin in carpentry. Either it’s right or it isn’t.
What gets me out of bed now isn’t the craft alone, it’s the pause before a homeowner realizes the work is actually finished and the price didn’t move. That quiet moment when they run their hand along a new countertop and look around their own kitchen like they’re seeing it for the first time. If I weren’t doing this, I’d probably be teaching it, because the thing I care about most now is passing along what the tradesman who trained me passed along: do the work right, show the person what you did, and stand behind it.
That’s personal. That’s the part I don’t outsource.
Meet Luca Romano – The Person Behind Every Job
Luca Romano is the Owner & Founder of the Fort Lauderdale branch of Sawyer Remodel, part of the Relay Home Co. family of local home service brands. He came up through the trade on active job sites, learning framing, finish work, and remodel management from the ground up over more than ten years before taking the lead here.
What separates Luca from a corporate franchise technician is simple: he’s accountable to the person standing in the living room. When the brand standards from Sawyer Remodeling require a written price before work starts, Luca is the one who makes sure that number is honest. When the Relay standard says send photos of the work, before and after, he’s the one who reviews them. There’s no layer between him and the result.
Outside the work, he’s the person on the fishing pier at dawn on a Sunday, getting skunked with a smile. A bad cast never hurt anyone, and the sunrise over the Intracoastal isn’t a bad consolation. It’s a small thing, but it speaks to a larger patience: swing again, pay attention, and don’t pretend the water owes you anything.
He makes one promise to every customer: if something isn’t right, he’ll be the one who makes it right, and you won’t have to chase him to do it.
Our Promise to Fort Lauderdale Homeowners
Every job we take gets a written price before any work begins. That price doesn’t drift because the weather shifted or because a supplier had a bad week. It’s fixed, it’s line-item clear, and it’s in your hands before we pick up a tool. The Relay Visibility Guarantee backs that up: total visibility, from live arrival times to photo updates to a digital invoice you can pay from your phone.
We don’t ask you to trust us on faith. We ask you to watch. The work gets documented. The progress gets shared. The finish gets photographed. If a homeowner ever has a question mid-project, they aren’t chasing a voicemail. The updates come to them.
And when the job is done, we stand behind it. If something isn’t right, call us. We don’t disappear after the final payment clears.
Our Credentials
Here’s what we bring to every project, and why it matters when you’re letting someone work inside your home:
- State-licensed pros, required by standard: Every pro working under the Sawyer Remodel name in Fort Lauderdale is required to hold the license and insurance the state of Florida requires for their trade. We don’t waive that requirement for anyone, and we don’t cut corners on it.
- Insured & bonded: The coverage is in place before a single tool leaves the truck. That protects your property and our team, and it’s non-negotiable for every local pro on the job.
- Years of local experience: More than a decade of South Florida remodel and construction work, on homes that weather real hurricane seasons, salt air, and high humidity. What works in a dry climate doesn’t always hold up in Fort Lauderdale, and we plan for that.
- Strong local reputation: The Fort Lauderdale branch has built its name the slow way: one written price at a time, one photo update at a time, one finished project at a time. We’d rather show you work than talk about ratings.
Here’s why those matter to a homeowner: a license means the state has set a floor for who is allowed to do this work, and we hold our team to it. Insurance means if something goes wrong on your property, you aren’t left holding the bag. Local experience means we’ve worked on Fort Lauderdale homes before yours, and we know what the salt air and the afternoon thunderstorms do to building materials over time.
Rooted in Fort Lauderdale
This branch serves the neighborhoods we drive through every week: Victoria Park with its shaded streets, Sailboat Bend with its historic bungalows, Coral Ridge with its mid-century bones, and the newer builds pushing west toward Plantation. We’ve worked in homes near Holiday Park, off Las Olas, and back in the quiet blocks of Wilton Manors and Oakland Park. Each area has its own housing stock, its own drainage quirks, its own history, and we’ve learned them project by project, not from a manual.
We don’t pretend to be from every town. This location serves Fort Lauderdale and the communities directly around it, and we’re here because those neighborhoods deserve a remodel team that shows up when it says it will, sends the photos, and writes the price down before the first day of work. That’s the Relay way, and it’s how we intend to keep earning the right to work in this city.
Written by Luca Romano, Owner at Sawyer Remodel Fort Lauderdale, serving Fort Lauderdale and surrounding Broward County communities.